The eighth of August is a special time in Tanzania. It’s a time where everyone in the community puts up their spade and farming implements and goes to the local NANE NANE (eight, eight) celebration, which in some places, consists of just looking at more farm stuff (like a county fair). In Makong’onda, we decided to celebrate NANE NANE by testing people for HIV/AIDS and having a HUGE party. The date became an excellent idea due to the amount of people who would be able to attend, and the amount of people who would give up going to the farm for the day.
As are all huge events in the village, this party was no different. By the time Thursday rolled around, I was a ball of nerves. We decided that there were 2 huge things that could go wrong:
1. The person playing the music wouldn’t show up
2. The people testing the villagers for AIDS wouldn’t show up
Musty called home on the Thursday before the event to pay the DJ for the music and called immediately after reaching Newala. I asked him what the problem was and he quickly explained that the man who was going to play the music received more money from a wedding, so he had just decided to cancel on us. As I received this news, I was handing a phone to one of my older students, my draw dropped, and I was speechless. The student, stared at me, and asked if there was anything at all he could do. I told him to get Habiba, one of my Form 3 students (and an almost constant fixture in my home) and shut the door in his face. Habiba ran into the house, and asked what was wrong. I told her what had happened, and I couldn’t help but cry when I got to the part where the guy left just because he got more money elsewhere. Habiba tsked and grabbed the edge of my T-shirt, yanking it above my skirt and drying my eyes with it. She insisted that I must stop crying, and that it would be fine. 2 hours after my fit, Musty got home, and immediately he told me that he had found another DJ. Crisis 1, averted.
The rest of the crisis were slightly more manageable. 5 students showed up to my house the night before to prepare the food and the gifts for the next day, and several boys showed up to provide firewood and game materials. By the end of the night, two peace corps volunteers had arrived to help me carry out the project (the minute they arrived, small children in the village followed them around, yelling “there are TWO Mirindas now!”). By the time the 10 of us (in my house with only 4 mattresses) laid on the floor to sleep it was after midnight. Bright and early at 5 in the morning, Habiba and Happy started to giggle, “Mirinda, are you seriously still asleep? We’re bored”. Groaning after 5 hours of sleep, I led the troops out of the bedroom and we began cooking again.
The overall day was a HUGE success. We had a relay race, we had planned to test only 150 people, but we tested over 300, and RAN OUT OF TESTS! The relay race that we planned was a huge success. The kids were told to jump in a grain sack to the end of the football field, there they had to run past the school and score a netball goal. After the netball goal they had to race around the library building to put a condom correctly on a model (Laura, who was in charge of this station, laments that many of my kids DO NOT know how to do this, I blame it on the fact they may have been in a hurry…). After they were passed they had to grab a small child and run with it around the school to Andrew, who asked everyone an AIDS question. The relay was a huge success, with tons of people crowding around each station to watch the action. By the end we realized it was a miracle that no small children were hurt as they were carried like grain sacks during the race.
Makong’onda Idol was a lot of fun, attracting many student singing groups and even singers and dancers from Mtwara. The stage was around 3 feet square as people kept pushing in to see the festivities, and the main table was constantly crowded with people. The dancing and singing was a lot of fun, and the winners each took home a coveted T-shirt.
We closed the day with a soccer game, which ended in a sudden death shootout (with Makong’onda winning), and everyone went home happy. 305 people went home knowing the status of their heath, and a little over 1000 people went home having learned life skills revolving around their health and how to prevent AIDS, (knowing the risk behaviors, how to use a condom, being faithful to one partner). The project was an overall success, and the next day the first person at my door (at 6 in the morning) was proof of this:
“Mwalimu Mirinda, when can I come to test again?”
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